For this type of project I would highly recommend that you lean heavily on
styles. Define a style for the recipe title, a style for the ingredients, a
style for the directions, and one for the notes (at minimum). Use Heading 1
for the titles unless you have part titles; in that case use Heading 1 for
the part titles and Heading 2 for the recipe titles. The reason for this is
that, by using heading styles for the titles, you make it easier to arrange
your recipes. Using Outline view (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/UsingOLView.htm), you can display just
the headings; you can then select the headings and alphabetize them or drag
them around as desired, and all the body text that follows each heading will
go with it when you move the heading.
Another good reason for using the built-in heading styles is that this makes
it easier to create a TOC. You can do it with any style, but Word is set up
to do it using the headings by default. You can't do it automatically at all
unless you've used a specific style for the headings and only the headings.
As a practical matter, I would suggest that you enter all the text
(including the ingredients) in a single column. Once you've got it in the
order you want (not necessarily based on page layout, which you may tweak
later to better fill pages), then select each block of ingredients and
select two columns from the Columns palette; Word will take care of
inserting the necessary Continuous section breaks (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/UsingColumns.htm).
Recipes will likely include fractions that Word doesn't provide via
AutoFormat As You Type, but the font you use will almost certainly include
fractions for thirds and eighths to match the ones for halves and quarters.
Find these in the Number Forms character subset of the Insert | Symbol
dialog (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/CreateFraction.htm). You
may want to assign keyboard shortcuts or create AutoCorrect entries for this
project.
You'll probably want an index in your cookbook, too. Before you start
working on this, be sure you read
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/formatting/Createindex.htm. It's tempting to try
to use a concordance (and it might work for a cookbook), but creating a
*useful* index is usually a largely manual job.
Finally, if you've never created a template before, see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart1.htm for the
most basic of basics. Just keep in mind that if you use styles consistently,
you don't have to make all your formatting decisions before you start. If
you change your mind about font or paragraph formatting for specific
elements after you get involved, you can just modify the style, and all the
paragraphs in that style will update automatically. You seem to have a
pretty good idea of how you want to lay out the book, but I always find it
helpful to look at several books of the type I'm designing to get design
ideas.
